


Half-Remembered

by lookninjas



Series: Children's Work [13]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cults, Gen, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-07 23:28:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13445679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lookninjas/pseuds/lookninjas
Summary: The memories fade, with time.They fade, and then again, they don't.  But she doesn't ask.





	Half-Remembered

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: "pretty much anything with Rey (and Ben)…ummmmm…….does she ask him about the first order more at some point? she was tiny when they left and probably didn’t really understand what all was going on, did she get curious when she was a little older? "

It fades, with time.

It fades and it doesn’t. It fades and then one day she looks at him across their tiny kitchen table and remembers a black jagged line across one eyebrow, like he’d been split open and sewn back together, remembers bruises dark across his face, remembers him puffy and swollen and sitting behind Snoke’s pulpit, staring at his hands, picking a scab, and she almost asks him if that was real, if it happened. 

But she doesn’t.

Sometimes she comes home and he’s sitting on the floor with his legs crossed, hands folded in his lap, eyes closed, perfectly still and she remembers someone saying (Chastity, maybe, or Hope – she doesn’t even know if that was their names anymore or if it’s just what she calls them in her mind, now, stock names for virtuous children which they all were, virtuous, and not like her) that Kylo Ren meditated six hours a day. That Kylo Ren could stay in communion with God for days, for weeks, and not need food or water. That Kylo Ren could leave his body behind and actually ascend, rise up.

It doesn’t sound true, and she’s not even sure anyone ever really told her that; she’s not sure if that conversation ever really happened or if it’s something her mind made up. But it seems, sometimes, like Ben eats less on the days she finds him like that, meditating quietly on the floor like that. It seems, sometimes, like a part of him is gone those days. Like it takes a long time to come back.

And she wonders, but she doesn’t ask.

And sometimes – not always, but sometimes – someone asks them to go to church with them and Ben can’t find a reason to get out of it fast enough. One of Rey’s friends parents, well-meaning, and usually Ben can find an excuse but sometimes he can’t and they wind up sitting there, holding hands in a pew. And Ben goes pale and trembles, and depending on the preacher, sometimes outright flinches. 

And Rey thinks of Snoke, and his voice hissing, and the way he said _war_ and _danger_ and _sacrifice_.

And it doesn’t seem like it could’ve happened, but then depending on the preacher sometimes it does.

And she doesn’t ask.

(One day, he will tell her. It hovers over her like a half-remembered sermon, like a dark place she doesn’t want to visit, like a bruise, like the sound of shouting and fists, like gunfire echoing in the distance. He will tell her, and it will hurt them both, and she isn’t ready for that. Not yet.

(So she doesn’t ask.)


End file.
